


Circumstances Beyond Our Control

by gonergone



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 16:04:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2627753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonergone/pseuds/gonergone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Everyone has a weakness, but I have two: everything you say, and everything you do."</p><p>It doesn't always end happily ever after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Circumstances Beyond Our Control

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stray_alchemist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stray_alchemist/gifts).



The last time Francis saw Charles – the Charles he knew, not the ghost who showed up in New York – was as the paramedics were pushing the stretcher with Henry on it out the front door of the Albemarle. They had all followed the two injured boys – their fallen comrades, Francis couldn't help thinking, remembering the Iliad, _Many a fallen comrade did he then avenge_ – he wondered if there would be anything here to avenge, or if this was the avenging: payment for Bunny. If everything would always be payment for Bunny, somehow. 

Out in the hotel's parking lot, the police hadn't bothered to stop them, and the three of them, Francis, Charles and Camilla, watched in silence as Richard and Henry were loaded into separate ambulances, until the doors were slammed and the ambulances left, their flashing red and white lights shining on everyone's faces, making Charles look alternately look like a demon and angel intermittently, interchangeably.

Later, when his wedding was coming up and things had gotten very grim indeed, he would sometimes get horribly drunk and think that Henry had taken the easy way out, the bastard, and he'd remember Charles's face in the parking lot, just for an instant, just for long enough that he would pick up the bottle and keep drinking until he blacked out. 

*

Hampden College had never impressed him. It was too rural, too boring, too convinced of its own importance, and Francis would have much rather been in New York or even Boston, where at least he could keep himself occupied. 

Hampden College had two things going for it: it was close to the country house, which was just about the only place that Francis absolutely loved, and it was willing to accept him despite a somewhat spotty education record. He didn't want to go there, and once there he didn't plan to stay. He had no intention of taking his studies seriously (obviously), and college was just one more thing his grandparents expected from him so they could pass his degree around their circle of friends. It wasn't about him at all, really. Very little was.

He had been getting dinner that first day when he'd literally run into Camilla in the dining hall line, knocking the registration booklet out of her hands. He'd bent down to grab it from the floor, the pages fluttering closed, losing her place, and handed it back sheepishly. In the florescent light of the dining hall she'd looked as pale as a ghost, her eyes wide and her hands clasped together. He'd had just enough time to think _she's beautiful_ when he'd noticed Charles next to her, and years later he would swear that for a moment the whole world stopped. Because Charles was beautiful, too, but he was more than that. He was, instantly, everything that Francis had been looking for in the backrooms of the shitty clubs and the one horrifying trip to a bathhouse he'd taken in San Francisco: sweet and shy and loving and beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. 

It took him years to understand that reading character into someone's face didn't really work, and by then Charles had broken his heart in a hundred places, and Francis had let him do it every time.

*

"Greek?" Francis looked from Camilla to Charles and back again, his eyes lingering on Charles.

"What's wrong with Greek?" Charles asked around a mouthful of spaghetti.

"I told him it's not a very useful thing to study," Camilla said, pushing her hair back and raising an eyebrow at her brother.

"Useful," Charles snorted, but his smile, when he looked at her, was affectionate. 

"It isn't," Camilla insisted. She looked at Francis. "What are you studying?"

Francis shrugged carelessly. "French literature, probably."

Camilla looked intrigued. "Really? That sounds interesting."

Charles shook his head. "That's not particularly useful, either, unless you plan to teach or something."

"God, no," Francis said, alarmed. "I went to private school in France, so my French is passable, and we read most of the modern classics while I was there, so it seems the easiest thing."

The twins were staring at him with matching expressions of interest.

"Did you really?" Camilla asked. "I wouldn't mind studying in France."

"We've never been anywhere," Charles explained. "Did you like it?"

Francis shrugged uncomfortably. "It was all right. We were way out in the country, not anywhere near Paris or anything. Paris would have been much better, I think."

"But you don't especially like French, do you?" Charles asked.

"Not especially," Francis admitted.

Charles frowned. "You should come and talk to this Greek professor with us. Apparently he doesn't take just any students, so you have to meet with him and plead your case or something." He shrugged – oddly, using only one shoulder – and looked at Francis expectantly. "It might help you decide."

"Greek," Francis sighed. He didn't think Charles quite understood how little effort he was planning to expend on his degree – or how little it mattered what it was in, so long as he didn't really have to work for it. The problem was that Charles seemed dead-set on taking Greek, for whatever reason, and his determination was, maybe, enough to pull Francis in with him. Because it might be the only way to get to know Charles, and that was worth effort. Even if it was rather a lot of effort. Even if it was Greek. 

"When do we meet with him?" 

*

The first time Francis had taken them all to the country they'd piled into Henry's BMW and driven up on a blustery Saturday morning in October, the wind whipping leaves down from the trees so steadily it sounded like rain. Henry had taken the turns in the hills too fast, making them all a little nervous and out of sorts by the time the house had loomed out of the surrounding trees, and there had been a moment of silence as everyone took it in. 

"Well," said Henry. "We're here."

Then it had been a mad dash for the front door, everyone eager to get inside and when Francis had shown them around they had looked at it the way he looked at it, reverently, touching the old wood and rose lampshades with care. 

He hadn't told them much about the house or the summers he had spent at it when he was small, but he didn't need to. They had all known each other since school had started but that was when he felt like they really understood him, when they saw inside him and could make sense of him.

That night they had all got rather drunk on decent Scotch and Charles had played the piano, easy melodies in the light from the fireplace. Francis watched the flickering light on the delicate bones of his cheeks, his strong hands, his mouth. Charles had paused to take a drink and caught Francis watching, and for a long, long moment their eyes held, until Francis felt warm all over and was on the brink of saying something – he didn't know what – and Bunny nearly tripped over a bookcase in the dark hallway, bellowing, and the moment was broken.

*

It was hard for Francis not to blame all of the worst mistakes of his life on alcohol. 

*

They were all at the twins', one night, late, snow piling up on the cars outside while they talked about Rousseau. Francis was hoping, dimly, that if he stayed late enough and got drunk enough that the drive home through the icy streets would resolve itself. _Vermont_. It snowed in Boston and New York, of course, but not like it did in Hampden, where it was utterly possible to be cut off from everyone and freeze to death in a snowbank. He hadn't been prepared for that, for the terrifying reality of it. He had to admit, though, that the snow made everything beautiful and full of potential. When it snowed he felt like anything was possible. 

He had gone to get the cigarettes from his coat pocket, fumbling in the dark hallway where the coats were hung until he found his own. He could hear the others in the kitchen, Henry's low murmur eliciting squawks of protest from Bunny and laughter from Camilla. He felt warm and happy and the last thing in the world he was expecting was to turn around and collide with another person, who he knew, immediately, because he could not mistake him anywhere, was Charles.

"Sorry," Francis said, stumbling back into the rack of coats. He lost his balance and flailed for a moment, hoping he wasn't about to fall over.

"What have you done to yourself?" Charles chuckled quietly, reaching to help untangle him. 

He was so close that Francis could smell him, the warm vanilla scent he shared with Camilla, that Francis could detect, faintly, every time he stepped into the apartment. 

One of Charles's hands clamps lightly around his wrist and pulled him forward slowly, giving him time, Francis realized, to pull away, as if that were at all likely. He could make out Charles's quick smile in the dark and then the warm dry lips pressed against his own. _This is real_ , he thought wildly, _this is happening_ , because for a moment it seemed impossible to have something he'd wanted so much. 

*

Kissing in dim hallways was something Charles especially enjoyed, as Francis grew to learn as months went on. Francis wondered, later, how much of that early desire was the thrill of being caught, the others only feet away.

After Bunny died, Francis could feel the wheels start to come off, but he convinced himself, they all convinced themselves, that Henry knew what he was doing. Sometimes Charles would come over to his apartment late at night and just get into bed and lay there, staring up at the ceiling in silence. It was unnerving but everything was unnerving then, the world shuddering on its axis and all of them terrified of prison. Charles had never struck Francis as being overly emotional but he should have; they all should have. They'd all gone mad, in a way, and nothing would ever be the same, but that was all below the surface. Otherwise everything looked the same, Charles's careless words and surreptitious kisses in hallways as everyone else played cards in the next room, promises even as the hands shook on Francis's skin. Still, it was enough to make Francis hope, which was so, so stupid. He knew better than that, but he hoped anyway, because Charles was everything in the world he wanted, and watching him slip through his fingers like sand felt like the end of the world. 

*

Their first time had been clumsy and rushed, both of the impatient and needy. Francis had fallen to his knees readily, taken Charles into his mouth and listened, greedy, to his moans and curses, stroking the soft skin of his thighs until he was quiet. 

Charles was at his most affectionate after an orgasm, carding his fingers through Francis's hair and kissing his mouth until moving down to explore his chest and fist his cock until Francis came, sighing his name. 

It was only months later that Francis could convince Charles to fuck him, but it had been worth all the wheedling in the world.

*

It was difficult for Francis to recall most of the details of the ritual later, but certain things he knew he'd remember until he died: the way the torchlight reflected in Henry's eyes, making him look inhuman; the way Camilla's bloody hair had hung down her back, nearly black in the darkness until you got up close and could _smell_ it; the way Charles had touched her breasts, in the beginning, cupping them more gently than he'd ever touched Francis. 

It always had been a sex ritual, though in describing it to them in the early stages Henry had conveniently left that part out. When he was confronted about it, loudly, by Bunny after the first botched attempt, he'd only said icily, "We've been studying the rituals for a week. I assumed you'd _know_ ," which may even have been the truth, considering it was Henry.

The truth was that Henry knew only a little more than the rest of them did about what was required for the rituals to work, and none of them seemed to see that until it was far too late. They followed him as rats did the Piper, even as he told them that the sexual element would be essential but small – masturbation. Group masturbation, with everyone giggling and averting their eyes had been bad enough, but when it didn't work and they'd had to move on to, as Henry put it, "manual stimulation," of each other, things had gotten more interesting. And horrifying. That was when Bunny should have walked away. That was when they all should have walked away, really, because even if the ritual hadn't worked in the end, it had changed them, as a group. There were too many things they couldn't unknow, and not just the way that Charles and Camilla touched each other, either. 

It was the way Bunny reacted when Henry touched him, eyes closed tightly until the very last moment, when he'd gasped Henry's name. 

It was the way Camilla's eyes had never left Henry's face as Francis worked him, even as Henry never looked at her – in fact, seemed suspiciously intent in _not_ looking at her. 

It was the way Charles didn't look at Francis once, in a way that wasn't suspiciously intent at all.

*

In class once Julian had said that the ancients had had a far more nuanced idea of fate than modern definitions tended to allow. Francis had always identified with Aeneas, sailing for Italy not of his own free will; someone who would only do the hard thing because he had no choice.

*

When Francis woke up the morning after they'd had sex for the first time, he'd lain there for a long time watching Charles sleep in his bed, an angel that Francis didn't deserve. He looked younger in sleep, innocent and pure and it was so easy, in that moment, for Francis to remember the lovely, perfect boy he'd fallen in love with the first time he'd seen him. In that moment all of his hopes were spun out in front of him and he knew that everything, _everything_ , was going to be fine.


End file.
